The terrorist actions of Sep. 11, 2001, resulted from commercial aircraft hijacking which had a devastating impact upon the economic structure of the United States. The ease of passage and entry of passengers on an aircraft, which is highly desirable for attracting and maintaining customer demand for air transportation, facilitated the groups of individuals who took over the aircraft by overpowering the crews, enabling the rerouting of the aircraft and the crashing into the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. and World Trade Center complex in New York, N.Y. A problem identified during the analysis of the events of Sep. 11, 2001 was that obvious adequate screening did not exist to determine intent of potential hijackers or apply profiles to identify potential hijackers at that time. The number of passengers and the limited tolerance of such passengers to submit to personally invasive searches has resulted in a patchwork of generic scanning and randomly selective physical searches in response to the apparent inadequacy. This patchwork of security measures is an ineffective compromise that has yet to show an effective security coverage and has inconvenienced passengers to such an extent that a significant drop in air service use has resulted.
A more directed approach would be to select those passengers who would most likely prove a threat and subject them to greater scrutiny in more intensive and invasive searches. The challenge is to screen out individuals to determine those having malicious intent similar to those contemplating similar tragic acts while not further restricting or harassing the vast majority of innocuous travelers. While the events of 9/11 have focused concerns of the security of air travel, an effective security screening is desirable in any environment where physical security is a concern.
Passive biometric devices seemed to be the logical direction of interest. Biometric devices have been developed that can transform physiological characteristics into a quantitative parameters. These physiologic parameters may then be used to determine probabilities of potential criminal acts directed towards an airline flight or other activity where human life may be at risk.
Usually, people with criminal or malevolent intent will betray themselves by elevated pulse rates, increased blood pressure, heightened respiration rates, excessive or varying patterns of perspiration, changing weight distribution, color and size variation in irises and pupils, alterations in voice stress, and changes in electromagnetic aura which are generally involuntary and unconscious reactions.
Known lie detectors are one such type of biometric device in which changes in biometric parameters are used to determine the truthfulness or deceptiveness of a subject. However, there are several problems associated with such devices; the subject is aware of the device, the results must be subjectively analyzed and the device requires physical contact with the subject. These problems make the detectors ineffective in screening large volumes of subjects due to both cost and time.
There are several known biometric devices that are effective obtaining physiological parameters in a passive manner without such physical contact and/or subject awareness.
Infrared imaging may be used to capture and quantify the “blush” that often accompanies deception or nervousness. While the characteristics of an infrared image are not always related to unconscious thought and may be subject to environmental conditions, this parameter may be monitored without actually touching the subject.
Coronary and respiratory rate and/or rhythm often exhibit change under stress and while not always related to unconscious thought, and subject to environmental conditions such as temperature and physical exertion of the subject, these parameters may be monitored without actually touching the subject as well.
Electromagnetic imaging can capture the electromagnetic field of a subject in a method similar to infrared imaging. Again, while the electromagnetic image may not always be related to unconscious thought and may be subject to environmental condition, this parameter can be monitored without actually touching the subject.
Load cells can obtain the anxious foot motion and shifting often accompanying a subject under strain. Anxious foot motion, while not always an unconscious act, can be obtained without the knowledge of the subject.
Eye scanning may be accomplished with digital imaging. The color of the iris and size of the pupil can be determined using such a method. Changes in these parameters are often associated with deception or nervousness and while these changes are not always unconscious acts, each may be monitored without the knowledge or physical contact of the subject.
Generally, a monitored physiological parameter is compared with a reference value. Typically, these reference values are derived by prior knowledge of the subject. The prior knowledge often includes age, size, and sex and generic average values associated with these variables. In the prior art, changes during monitoring may also be correlated to a conversation or event subsequent to the monitoring for analysis, such an approach is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,507,291 to Stirbl et al, the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference. These correlations are performed subjectively at a time distant from the monitoring. Changes in these physiological parameters may be used at least as indicators or as signals that an emotional state exists or has come into being in the subject that may be malevolent. However, this prior art is not able to perform a real-time analysis of the monitored parameter with the reference value.
Thus, a real time approach that can exist in parallel with current screening processes enabling singular and controlled assessment without reduction of existing throughput speeds would address the security concerns without the detrimental commercial effects of prior art approaches. Such a system would obviously be advantageous for use as described above for the customer base of the commercial airline industry. Additionally, such a system would likewise be advantageous in controlling access to courtrooms, police stations, places of assembly, and similar buildings/areas that require security or could be considered terrorist targets.
In view of the unmet needs and problems with prior art solutions, it is an object of the disclosure to provide a novel system and method by which subjects may be processed quickly and anonymously by automated biometric assessment, allowing personal attention to be afforded those subjects that respond to stimulus in ways associated with ill intention. The disclosure affords a dispassionate analysis and permits high throughput of subjects on acceptable and legal business, while enabling the detention of suspect individuals for further query. The routing of these two separate groups may be accomplished by turnstile segregation of the subject population. Implementation of the disclosure may reduce search and evaluation time by as much as seventy to eighty percent when compared with prior art individual queries.
Where entry security or personnel control is required, the disclosure offers an efficient filter for admittance to airport terminals, banking and insurance offices, courts, stadiums, police stations, conference centers, military bases, sensitive corporate sites, other transportation terminals and penal institutions.
It is therefore an object of the present disclosure to overcome the limitations of the prior art and to provide an inspection station for determining a subject's physiological reaction to a stimulus. The inspection station may comprise of one or more physiological stand-off sensors, an electronic storage device, a stimulation interface capable of exposing the subject to a predetermined stimulus object, a processor, and one or more controllable egress gates.
It is a further object of the present disclosure to provide a method for profiling a subject without physical contact comprising of the steps of acquiring a baseline representation of at least one characteristic of the subject, and prompting the subject with a visual and/or audio object or stimulus. After prompting the subject, the method further includes acquiring a post-prompting representation of at least one characteristic of the subject, determining if a difference in at least one characteristic between the post-prompting representation and the baseline representation exceeds an associated threshold, and profiling the subject based on any exceeded thresholds.
It is another object of the present disclosure to present a passive biometric surveillance station comprising of a resident database, a means for determining if a subject is in the resident database, and a means for stimulating the subject. The passive biometric surveillance station may also comprise a means for determining a physiological reaction to the stimulus and a means for comparing the physiological reaction to a normal physiological reaction.
It is still a further object of the present disclosure to provide a physical portal between a general area and a secure area and a method of granting access to a secure area to include the quantitizing of the physiological responses of the human subjects to a stimulus and the granting of access based upon said quantitizing.
It is another object of the present disclosure to provide a method of screening subjects for access to a secure area comprising the steps of creating and storing baseline representations of subject characteristics. This method is comprised of creating an image of a subject, comparing the image of the subject to images in a resident data table, and directing the subject to a secondary area if the image of the subject matches an image in said resident data table. If the subject image does not match an image in said resident data table the method continues by providing a stimulus to the subject, creating post-stimulus representations of the subject characteristics, determining deviations in the subject characteristics from the baseline representation and the post-stimulus representations, comparing the deviations to predetermined deviation limits, and directing the subject to the secondary area if the deviations are outside of the deviation limits or granting access to the secure area if the deviations are within the deviation limits.